Non-Fiction Review
by Patti Richter
150 Quick Questions to Get Your Kids Talking
Written by Mary E. DeMuth
Trying to get our children to open up and talk often proves futile. Seemingly overnight they can go from endless chatter and questioning to quiet reserve and disinterest in parental perspectives. How do we share our values beyond simply dictating to our kids what to believe and what to avoid in today’s culture?
North Texas author and speaker Mary DeMuth has good motivation (three growing kids) in her search to provide healthy influence at home. In one of her latest books, 150 Quick Questions to Get Your Kids Talking (Harvest House Publishers, 2011), the family dinner table plays an essential part.
Studies reveal family dinners as most effective in influencing kids’ values and behavior. DeMuth’s family took up the habit of sharing trials and triumphs over meals, but then she had an inspiration: Create questions the whole family could answer, one each night. She typed questions, cut them into squares, and placed them in a box in the center of the dinner table.
“Our table became a lively place of bantering, of exchanging ideas, dreams, and regrets,” DeMuth says. “The questions probed into areas I hadn’t expected. My kids learned about their parents. We learned about our kids—all in a nonthreatening, easygoing way.”
For those of us lacking the creative juices to produce more than a handful of conversation starters, DeMuth offers plenty. In ten chapters she provides 15 questions each—questions that will likely bring kids out of their shell and help parents avoid the status of irrelevance. This small book, 150 Quick Questions to Get Your Kids Talking, will also inspire readers with further questions for their children.
DeMuth writes an articulate preface to each chapter. These pages offer personal stories and advice related to the chapter’s topic. The author shares her times of lesson-learning in the humble tone of a fellow traveler down the road of life, rather than an authoritative teacher all finished with the journey.
Find this book at harvesthousepublishers.com, $6.99.
Blue Ribbon News special contributor Patti Richter works as journalist, writing news and feature stories, book reviews and more for many Christian publications. She lives in Heath with her husband Jim.
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